It’s still a little awkward for me to mesh my pregnant and law student statuses into any sort of coherent written product. I’m not sure how to incorporate my dislike for property law with the fact that all my favorite jeans no longer button (Bella band to the rescue!) Or that some days I surf the baby section of Target.com for a while, and then go over to Amazon and look for readable history books that will help me understand constitutional law in context. Something about all that just doesn’t quite flow.

But you’ve got to start somewhere. Every Friday I take the bus back to hometown where F picks me up, usually around dinner time. Last week, for nearly four days straight, I craved fish fry. It was ridiculous. I do live in prime fish fry country, I mean, REALLY prime, but it’s not something I ordinarily eat. I am not Catholic, and I would almost never order a fish fry at a restaurant, despite them being available almost anywhere almost any time. Still, last week, for hours on end, I could think of nothing but lightly breaded cod, potato pancakes with a side of applesauce and perhaps some marble rye.

My husband has become quite accommodating recently (I tested this by asking him the quintessential pregnant wife favor a few weeks ago – going out in the cold for a carton of ice cream), and was completely willing to accompany me to a somewhat smoky pub reputed for having a delicious fish fry. We waited way too long, but the meal was totally worth it. For the sake of my post-pregnancy waist line, I hope this craving does not reoccur often. On the other hand, I eat quite healthy and inexpensively during the week, so I feel okay about an occasional weekend splurge.

In the other world, constitutional law is slowly becoming more clear and comprehensible. I’m clinging to the hope that like last semester, once I start outlining and preparing for exams I’ll have many “aha” moments that will pull all this stuff together. I’m learning a lot about the federal government in administrative law, which is fascinating and alternately alarming and encouraging. I really wish my dad (conservative who rails against “big government”) and brother (recently turned radical libertarian), could sit in on this class. As if our occasional family dinner conversations aren’t heated enough already.

Soo….. I’ve been a bit quiet lately, probably because most of the interesting things I’ve had to say related to the fact that F and I are expecting a baby in about 30 weeks.

It all started in Mexico, when I got a little dizzy one morning and my mother-in-law said I was pregnant. At that point I was hardly even pregnant, but her analysis turned out to be correct. (This woman did birth nine children, so she’s built up some intuition in that area). Back in the U.S., once I determined I was actually late (exams and Mexico really messed with my memory of time for a while there), I waited three or four days, at home with nothing to do, freaking out, thinking and thinking, in semi-denial, before I went to get a pregnancy test. Positive.

There’s been a theoretical discussion in our house about having a kid during law school ever since I started considering law school. First I thought maybe we’d try to get pregnant about 9 months before graduation. (I talked to a lady at the admitted students’ weekend who had done this). But then I started reading all these law-mom blogs about women who had babies during school. I talked to friends through my immigration forum who highly recommended having a kid during graduate/professional school. I saw the pregnant girls at law school and thought, huh, well there’s an idea…

F was initially resistant. He didn’t really want to move to college town, and was holding onto this idea that sometime in the nearish future I would take a year off and be a full-time stay-at-home mom to our infant child. However, I’m already 30 people, and it doesn’t make any sense to think that upon graduating with a load of student loan debt, we would be in any position for me to not be working as an attorney.

Not having any idea how long this whole pregnancy thing would take (to happen I mean), and feeling, for the first time in my life, pretty willing and relatively capable of caring for a child, we decided to just see what happened. And then it happened, to my surprise and disbelief, and F and just about everyone else’s excitement.

I’m definitely still adjusting to the whole concept, but during the last six or so weeks I’ve thought through a lot of technicalities (insurance, where to live in college town as a little family, school + baby, summer plans) and I really think everything is going to be okay.

We have had a long stretch of frigid hell since the start of the semester. No days above freezing for weeks. I’ve been wearing tights (thanks Mom!) under my jeans for extra warmth, walking to school cursing my birth in this godforsaken state, wanting desperately to win a free trip to Mexico, or Kentucky, or anywhere warm (even 50 degrees!), stat! Icy sidewalks, slippery one-mile walks to and from school, frozen faces, staticky hair from wearing hats — ahh Midwestern winter on campus.

I only opine about it with some fondness right now because today is sunny and melty. Walking home just now, a runner passed me with a short-sleeve shirt on and no hat. I saw another wearing shorts, a long-sleeve t-shirt and no winter gear. This is what happens to people in the north! This is why we scoff, along with our new President, at schools closing for half an inch of snow or a little ice. This is because today, when weather.com tells me it’s 38 degrees, but feels like 30, is a heat wave!

Weeelll, it’s a little more difficult than I thought adjusting to semester two. I thought with one semester under the belt the readings would be easier to do (since many law terms are no longer foreign), but my classes are substantively much, much different this semester. The texts are shorter but denser, require more outside knowledge, and just generally seem to involve more historical perspective.

Constitutional Law is not nearly the interesting subject I thought it would be. It’s a lot of history. I don’t mind history, but my professor is not the most effective lecturer to begin with, and her random droning is not helping me learn.

Property is pretty terrible so far, as I should have expected. My professor has mixed reviews, some great, some terrible. I was hoping I would love him, but not yet anyway. In fact, I sort of want to beat my head against the desk in class sometimes.

My elective is Administrative Law, which usefully deals with a lot of the topics I think we are supposed to learn in Con Law, but so far it’s sort of going over my head. The professor loves to spend half the class talking about current events that relate to the federal government, and how things are changing and happening with the transition from Bush to Obama, which is interesting. Actually, Admin Law is pretty great.

I have the same Legal research and writing teacher I had last semester, who I adore, so that is great. I have to write a pretty lame memo this week, but I know how to write for her already, and I know I will learn a lot more from her this semester, so that’s good.

Finally, I have Criminal Procedure. I have the same crazy teacher I had last semester, but right now, all I feel for him is love. I hated his class last semester, but this semester I have so much less love for my other professors that he almost seems effective. AND, despite skipping his class at least once a week last semester, and not really paying attention to the class discussion when I did go, I still got a good grade in he class, which is alarming, hilarious and great. I attribute this partially to an old friend, who sadly transferred out of my school as a 2L as I started as a 1L. Early last semester, he gave me some great advice about this professor. I kept that nugget of wisdom in my mind all semester and truly, it was very helpful, I believe, in doing well on the exam.